Subject: XOVER: Stone's Throw 1/1 Date: 10 Oct 1996 23:19:38 -0400 From: kielle@subreality.com (Kielle) Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Newsgroups: alt.comics.fan-fiction *** IN JOKE ALERT! IN-JOKE ALERT! *** In a private "Amiable conversation" on 96-07-27 11:04:39 EDT, ianf@cogs.susx.ac.uk (Pinta Scrumpy) made the mistake of blithely speaking thusly: > I guess that means you don't want to hear my idea for a > huge co-written 4-part 20-chapters-per-part saga featuring > Cassie, the X-Men, Excalibur, Jack, all of RACMX, the > Inner Circle, the X-Files, Star Trek TNG, Bachelo's > turtle, the cast of 'Friends' and Martha's cat, then? And thusly the answer returneth...I just couldn't resist a dare like that. And they said it couldn't be done! BWAH HAH HAH!!! Just sit back and let the madness roll over you. Sorry, but I had to take a stab in the dark at "Jack," so I picked the weirdest one that came to mind... Comments happily accepted, of course -- drop me a line if you're tempted to archive it, though I can't imagine why you'd want to. DISCLAIMER: Oh heck, sure, lots of things in here belong to lots of people who aren't me. This is just a satire, a piece of fluff, a hallucination, FUN! So kindly don't sue me. All you'd get is a big pile of dog-eared comics, anyway. Within Stone's Throw Of The Lapping Shores Of Sanity By Kielle (kielle@subreality.com) "Did I mention, um," the man said hazily, waving his fork in the air, "did I mention the turtle?" "No," she replied through clenched teeth. "You did not mention the turtle." Her day just wasn't going well. It had begun with the e-mail message requesting her return to headquarters for her annual report -- a full month early, which wasn't surprising now that she thought about it. After all, her staff had been shaken down and restructured fairly thoroughly over the last few weeks. It just wasn't fair! There was no possible way she could have a full report ready by noon...but she had no choice. She'd been at the head of her own project and free of the bureaucracy for so long now that she'd forgotten what HQ could be like on a busy day. By the time she finally managed to struggle through security, several strands of her hair had come loose from her neat golden ponytail and she had no time left in which to clean up. Combing the errant locks back with her free hand, she'd composed herself as best she could and swept into her superior's office... Only to find that his majesty had taken an early lunch with some medal-coated foreign official. She, of course, hadn't even had breakfast. And she couldn't risk being more than five minutes away from the her absentia boss' office, for he could return at any moment. Reluctantly, she'd followed her stomach down to the cafeteria, which was already well crowded. She'd barely managed to find a seat and maneuver into it without dropping her tray...although she DID manage to drop her briefcase. Murphy's Law held true. The clasp broke on impact, sending her papers skirling across the busy floor. Cursing and growling under her breath, she'd crouched down awkwardly, praying that her tailored grey skirt wouldn't split open at the seams. Out of the corner of her eye she'd been grateful to see that a man in a rumpled dark suit had dropped to one knee to help her gather up her reports, which were now hopelessly shuffled. With a sigh, she accepted the handful of documents from the stranger and stuffed them back into her case. She also grudgingly accepted his hand up with an automatic "thank you." But, of course, nothing WOULD go right for her that day, would it? The dark-haired young man who'd so kindly helped her up and who now sat across from her at the cafeteria table was charming, endearing, and somewhat on the handsome side, if a touch long in the nose department.. He was also very, very drunk. And, in his charming, endearing way, utterly insane. "What tipped me off," he was saying now, and though she'd been trying to tune him out she had a sinking feeling that it was not the first time he'd regaled her with this part of his tale, "was that newsgroup. Racm-something-or- other, right? 'Wrecked artistic comics' or such. Buncha fan-types, pro-mutants, I don't know. Well, there was this one..." he groped for the word "...address, yes, address e-mail thingie, that was...it wasn't REAL." He lowered his voice conspiratorily, pointing at her with his fork. "I mean, it was an, an address that was, um, classified. Place up in New York. Some school. No, no, not the SCHOOL'S address, that's normal enough. There's this mutant underground, you see. And there's a...a NODE under that school. Sorta of a switchboard for kinds of mutanty things. S'not really legal but someone high up likes it and doesn't let anyone do anything about it. Heh! I'm not supposed to know this, but I have my sources, right?" He beamed owlishly at her and she had to concede that he had a charming, endearing smile, too. That made her like him even less. "Right. You're still with me?" She grunted noncommittally and concentrated on her microwaved potato. This didn't deter him. "So anyway, there's these personal message coming from this hub, right? Which shouldn't be happening -- I mean, they could be traced, so who would be using that server for personal...uh...stuff? So me and my partner went out there and they wouldn't let us in, but the lady, the lady who met us at the gate -- get this -- she's got the same name that was on the personal message! Well, almost. I mean, 'Cassie,' 'NeonCas,' too close to be a coincidence, right?" She groaned silently and muttered, "It probably WAS a coincidence, okay?" His face fell, but only for a moment. "Oh. Well, that's what my partner said." "You should listen to your partner. He sounds like the sensible one." He waved his hand dismissively. "Nonono, I was really onto something..." He frowned. "Well, at the time it made sense, but I can't remember it right now...something about that British team, the one with the really amazing blonde..." "Excaliber." She stared at him, one eyebrow raised. "Uh huh." "Uh huh indeed. There's an immense amount of information flow between that school and that Muir place. But that's not the exciting part!" He banged his fist excitedly down on the table and she jumped. "This is the exciting part! All of that information was being tapped along the way...which is very very very bad because whoever's running that underground node also siphons off a lot of top-black government info. I was getting veeeeery close this time...I even have a name. Do you want to hear it?" "No." Oblivious to her bristling body-language, he leaned uncomfortably close to her ear and whispered loud enough for the entire table to hear, if they cared: "The...Inner...Circle." He sat back down with a pleased look on his boyish features. "Well? What do you think?" "I think you've lost your happy-jacket and I'll be quite pleased to strap you back in," she replied dryly. "No thank you," he said blithely, her meaning soaring past him in a beautiful shining arc of irony which quite completely missed its intended mark among his brain cells. And he continued inexorably, like a yellow bulldozer on a West Country garden path*. "By this point my partner had gone home, but I wasn't even remotely tired, so I dropped in on some friends who know just about anything you could ever want to know about the net, real nerdy never-touched-a-girl hacker- types but good guys really, and they tracked the address down just like that." He tried to snap his fingers as emphasis and missed. He glared briefly at his uncooperative digits then shrugged. Then a slightly lost look appeared in his eyes and he frowned, his lips working as if he was trying the locate the CD track he'd skipped off of. She sighed and gave up. "The Inner Circle," she prompted. He brightened and ran both hands back through his already on-end hair before planting his elbows on the table and continuing. "Yes. Yes, that was exactly it. The Inner Circle. It actually turned out to be about a dozen DIFFERENT addresses, but I tracked a big one down to a really amazingly expensive place in New York. This is where it gets weird..." "Oh really...?" "Oh yes. I flashed my badge and all that jazz so eventually they let me in to talk to some guy they called 'the White King.' And you know what...? It...was...Jack." "Uh huh. Jack. Jack who?" "Jack! Jack Jack Jack. THE Jack!" He made vague motions around his head, as if he was describing a horrible Elephant-Man deformity, or perhaps a globe... She stared at him in dawning horror. "You don't mean Jack from JACK IN THE BOX?!?" "Yes! Yes, precisely! You agree with me then?" She was attempting to edge away but the big guy in the chair directly behind her prevented her from fleeing from this madman. "What do you mean?!" "It makes sense! HE'S the one who's really in charge! He's the man behind the scenes! It all fits! He has all the power! Why, he had the entire cast of 'Friends' there as his personal servants! Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox in little topless maid's outfits, the guys stacked up like a throne for Jack to sit on...I was quite shocked, I can tell you that." Heavens above, he was still going! "Then it got REALLY strange, because that's when all those weird little talking animals came pouring out of the airvents armed to the teeth, and they went after Jack, something about 'rescuing' someone. But the cat and the turtle dancing across the floor, well, THEY seemed to have a different agenda. Mean little kitty but a hell of a good writer, look, I can show you the scratches..." He stuck his hand under his thin ugly tie and between buttons as if he was really going to show her the marks. She lunged across the table and stopped him with one iron hand on his wrist. "NO! No. That's quite all right. I believe you. Really." He smiled happily at her. "Oh, that's nice. I don't hear THAT very often. Okay, I trust you. So here's the truth about Star Trek: The Next Generation, as the cat told me: Gene Roddenberry wasn't from Earth after all, and when he died he willed them the real stuff -- it was buried in his backyard -- so now the government is after anyone in the cast who SAW the stuff, and they've got Jonathan Frakes eating right out of their hand or he'll never see Genie again, you understand? You thought he has doing those goofy alien autopsy things because he WANTED to...? "And then the TURTLE, why, he..." A shadow fell over her and she jumped and looked back. Then she scrambled to her feet with a grateful sigh. "Oh thank god, sir. I thought you'd never get back from lunch. Why didn't you just page me?" "You've changed your number. Shall we get started?" "Let's. I'm up to my eyeballs in work back at my office so I'd like to make this quick, okay?" Her psychotic tablemate was still happily babbling away -- she took advantage of the break in the crowd around her boss to plow towards the door. Only when she'd escaped from the Cafeteria Of Doom did she heave a sigh of relief. She hadn't finished her lunch but she'd lost her appetite. "Walter, since when does the FBI cafeteria allow winos inside for a snack?" The assistant director rolled his eyes as he led the way back across the complex. "I'm terribly sorry about that, Val. He's actually a decent agent most of the time, but he's been in a royal state since Friday. A case went bad -- something to do with an alleged telepath up Boston way." He sighed heavily. "As usual, someone pulled a string and nothing came of it." She paused in midstep then hurried to catch up, her briefcase swinging in her hand. "Good Lord. You mean one of THOSE cases?" He nodded tiredly. "So that was...?" "In the flesh and twice as spooky." AD Walter Skinner actually smiled as he ushered X-Factor's liaison into his office. "And if you think Fox Mulder is strange when he's drunk, Ms. Cooper, you should hear him when he's SOBER." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ * And if you can get THIS obscure reference, you get a paisley star! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Comments welcomed at kielle@subreality.com, not like I actually believe that anyone WOULD say anything...I've just gotta say it. .-=K=-.